French minister vows to 'protect the French' after student rape and murder
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00:00On top of the sadness at Paris-Dauphine University, there's anger.
00:06We have a justice system that doesn't work. The suspect had an expulsion order. He was
00:12supposed to leave France, but instead he was casually wandering around Paris.
00:17It's not normal that a man who should have been under house arrest was allowed out. The
00:21law wasn't respected.
00:24The rape and killing of 19-year-old student Philippine, and the fact that the suspect
00:29Taha O was supposed to be deported and wasn't, has inflamed political tensions in France,
00:34where the new right-wing government plans to crack down on immigration.
00:39France's new interior minister, who has vowed to boost law and order, said the country's
00:44legal arsenal needed to develop to protect the French.
00:48So what went wrong in this case?
00:51Convicted for a rape committed in 2019 when he was a minor, Taha O was sentenced to seven
00:56years in prison and expulsion at the end of it. But he was released in June, then placed
01:01in administrative detention while the French authorities issued a request for a consular
01:06pass to Morocco.
01:08It finally came through in early September, by which time a judge had freed Taha O, one
01:13condition he reported regularly to the authorities.
01:18It's quite surprising because he hadn't been in the detention centre for the maximum of
01:2290 days yet, so we should really ask what reason the judge gave in order to release him.
01:29Just before the student's murder, the suspect had been placed on a wanted list because he
01:33flouted the conditions of his release. France routinely issues deportation orders, but only
01:39around 7% of them are enforced, compared to 30% across the European Union.